Magic To the Future

Review

Of the eight different professional magic routines I’ve seen this summer, Magic to the Future is the worst. Tim the Magician attempts to frame his show within a goofy time travel narrative featuring AI voice assistants, autonomous toy robots, and a Shake Weight. That’s not a terrible idea, but his storytelling execution falls well below the expected bar of a fringe production. This travel narrative serves as an excuse for him to string together magic tricks, but those tricks are uninspired, and Tim constantly misses dialogue timings with the prerecorded audio and video tracks he sluggishly queues from a laptop on stage. This poor execution of the story’s delivery is unfunny, unintentional and it only detracts from the show.
Two low points involve a sloppy matryoshka doll multiplication trick, and when he demonstrates an ability to memorize Rubik’s cube algorithms, reproduce them on stage over the course of several minutes, and then try to pass off solving the puzzle as magic. His approach to cover for this seems to be putting up a self-aware front about his lacklustre tricks, but when that gag runs throughout the entire show, it becomes a draining chore to watch. Does Tim successfully produce some fundamental guessing games and a couple card tricks? Yes. But that does nothing to save the rest of this performance. There are great magic shows at this fringe. This is not one of them.
Reviewed by Kevin Pennyfeather.